ASP.NET is expected to have some improvements on the generation of client IDs.
Although this is a major improvement, it comes short by not allowing the generation of shorter client IDs for server controls.
My good friend Nuno Gomes has done some work on generating shorter client IDs for controls (*).
Jeff has taken it one step further with his How to shorten ASP.NET automatically generated control IDs article on CodeProject.
If you want to see a running example, check out http://www.biocompare.com/.